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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28718193">Spiritul Liber</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingersnapper/pseuds/gingersnapper'>gingersnapper</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>1960s, 60s, Activism, Antiwar, Counterculture, Drugs, F/F, F/M, Gay Rights, Psychedelic, Racism, Sexism, Vietnam, War, hippie, protest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:54:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,375</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28718193</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingersnapper/pseuds/gingersnapper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Katryna “Kat” Everly was born into a Roma caravan in Romania and lost her family in the Holocaust before being adopted by an American family from Belleville, New Jersey. After a brief romance with a local boy who moved away, and the death of her adoptive father after he was drafted into the Korean War, Kat closes herself off and sticks to the company of her good friend, Gary Harris, until she finds that Belleville is no longer the place for her. When things start heating up as the revolutionary 1960s take full charge of the times, Kat heads out west to Southern California in hopes of taking control of her own life as opposed to letting the times take control of her. Old friends of the past come back to haunt her, and she finds that the past keeps knocking at her door. With war around the corner and counterculture seeping through the cracks of racism, misogyny, violence and more, Kat is forced to grab the bull by the horns and take her future into her own hands.</p><p>(Read the introduction, this deviates A LOT from what I normally do)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair, Gale Hawthorne &amp; Madge Undersee, Haymitch Abernathy/Effie Trinket, Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark, Rory Hawthorne/Primrose Everdeen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Introduction</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Long story short, this is a story that I really want to publish but obviously I can’t publish a Hunger Games fanfic, but it started out this way! These chapters will be a lot short than what I normally do... but that’s because it’s 85 chapters!</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Short intro for the story. Please read because it’s important to figure out who is who (although that’ll probably be pretty easy)!</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The reason I am writing this little intro because I am changing the names of and modifying the characters while still retaining some of the basic cookie cutter elements of each character because I love the ideas that I have for this story so much that I’d love to someday publish it, and considering that both times I’ve played with this idea have been fanfics, I can’t really publish a fanfic, can I? The ideas and views that I’ve used and expressed in my stories, <em> Our Anthem </em> and <em> For Their Future/Freedom Fighters </em> originally came from this original idea so that is why I chose to write this first as a Hunger Games 1960s AU. So with that all said and done, below you will find everything you need to know before going into this story without spoiling too much!</p><p>
  <b><br/>Setting</b>
</p><p>Belleville, New Jersey - the hometown for most of our characters. This is where Kat begins her story.</p><p>Espíritu, California - a small fictional town about an hour outside of Los Angeles, approximately located where Acton, CA is.</p><p>Los Angeles, California</p><p>Washington D.C.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Time</b>
</p><p>1955; 1964 - 1975<br/><br/></p><p>
  <b>Character Key</b>
</p><p><strong>Katryna “Kat” Everly</strong> <em> (Katniss Everdeen) </em> - A Roma girl adopted by an American family. An antiwar activist who also advocates for gender and racial equality through peace. She is a pacifist and spends a lot of time with Finn’s tribe.</p><p><strong>Peter Melnyk</strong> <em> (Peeta Mellark) </em> - An American boy who is interested in Kat and joins her in activism, although he is more focused on taking over his family’s diner. He is an artist who creates psychedelic art and he befriended Harvey.</p><p><strong>Gary Harris</strong> <em> (Gale Hawthorne) </em> - An African American guy who knew Kat in their hometown and has been trying to get her to date him. He was adopted by the white Haverlane family and hates the idea that he was raised by a white family. He is a racial equality advocate and later a member of the black panthers and is frequently victimised by Los Angeles police.</p><p><strong>Joanie Miyamoto</strong> <em> (Johanna Mason) </em> - A Japanese American girl who is an exotic dancer at a club in Los Angeles. She doesn’t believe that anyone should love her and doesn’t care about the events happening around her.</p><p><strong>Finn O’Donnell</strong> <em> (Finnick Odair) </em> - An Irish American man who started a tribe of hippies in the desert of Southern California. He and his fiancée, Nanni, take in everyone who wants to join them and They spread peace through peaceful protests.</p><p><strong>Nanni Cheauka</strong> <em> (Annie Cresta) </em> - A Native American woman of the Hopi tribe who joined Finn on his travels and fell in love with him. She leads peaceful protests in Los Angeles.</p><p><strong>Penelope “Penny” Everly</strong> <em> (Prim Everdeen) </em> - Kat’s adoptive sister. She is in love with Rory.</p><p><strong>Rory Haverlane</strong> <em> (Rory Hawthorne) </em> - Victor’s older brother. He is in love with Penny and gets drafted and sent to Vietnam.</p><p><strong>Victor Haverlane</strong> <em> (Vick Hawthorne) </em> - Gary’s white adoptive brother. He is a police officer who moved to Los Angeles at the request of his mother to keep an eye on Gary and pursues Joanie.</p><p><strong>Mary Jane Upton</strong> <em> (Madge Undersee) </em> - A girl who fell in love with Gary despite her family’s dislike of interracial relationships and followed him out to California.</p><p><strong>Delaney Callaghan</strong> <em> (Delly Cartwright) </em> - A church-going girl who was engaged to her college sweetheart but fell in love with her female best friend. She broke off her engagement and ran away to California with her girlfriend and ended up in Finn’s tribe. She is an advocate for gay rights.</p><p><strong>Harvey Ackerman</strong> <em> (Haymitch Abernathy) </em> - A drunkard WWII vet who lives in the desert that Peter befriends and checks on every so often.</p><p><strong>Ellie Turner</strong> <em> (Effie Trinket) </em> - A girl from Harvey’s hometown who got a government job to find him and checks in on him. She loves him, but he just wants to be alone.</p><p><strong>President Charles Shaw</strong> <em> (President Snow) </em> - the president of the United States starting in 1963, taking over from the recently assassinated President Kennedy, winning the 1964 election and again winning the 1968 election. He is controversial, makes horribly hateful comments and passes things to appease the people and then tries to remove them when he thinks enough time has passed. He is irrational, sexist, racist, and an all-around terrible president who somehow keeps getting elected (sound familiar?). Kat, Finn, Gary and various other political activists become enemies of his quickly.</p><p><strong>Christy Melendez</strong> <em> (Cressida) </em> - A Hispanic journalist who has to deal with her male coworkers constantly demeaning her and refusing to give her a chance. She is finally given a chance by anchorman Calvin Farber.</p><p><strong>Carlos and Pepito Sanchez</strong> <em> (Castor and Pollux) </em> - two Hispanic brothers who befriend Christy and join the fight for equality. Carlos is an aspiring journalist who has better opportunities than Christy, but still has to deal with racism from his white coworkers. Pepito is deaf and has even less opportunities, and Carlos does what he can to provide for him and protect him.</p><p><strong>Calvin Farber</strong> <em> (Caesar Flickerman) </em> - an American newscaster who always starts his broadcasts with ‘Goooood morning, Vietnam!’ even though his broadcasts are rarely seen in Vietnam. He gives Christy a chance when the newspaper she works for won’t.</p><p><strong>Samuel Carlisle</strong> <em> (Seneca Crane) </em> - an army commander in Vietnam.</p><p> </p><p>
  <b>Secondary Characters</b>
</p><p>Stacey Barkley - Delaney’s friend/lover</p><p>Brian Douglas - Delaney’s fiancé</p><p>Lana Burke - Gary’s friend</p><p>Darnell Lawrence - Gary’s friend</p><p>Lamar Anderson - Gary’s friend</p><p>Terese Lowe - Gary’s friend</p><p>Elton Macfadyen - a member of Finn’s tribe</p><p>Sheila Montgomery - a member of Finn’s tribe</p><p>Caseo &amp; Mellie Melnyk - Peter’s parents</p><p>Agnes Everly - Kat’s adoptive mother</p><p> </p><p>If you’ve read this far, congratulations! I hope you like the ideas that I have and are looking forward to reading this story as much as I am in writing it! If you have any ideas or there’s something you want to see, please share! A good portion of my ideas for all of my stories come from my readers! Look for the first chapters in the near future!</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Just You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>June, 1955. Kat attends a school dance with Mary Jane and receives some surprising news from a boy she’d never even spoken to, but had kept an eye on.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>‘Just You’ — Dion and the Belmonts</p><p>Storyline 2*</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Kat: June, 1955</strong>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em> “I would love you so sincerely; I would love you, only you. I would love you oh so dearly if you only would be true...” - Dion &amp; the Belmonts </em>
</p><hr/><p>Dances were never my thing, but I couldn’t say no to Mary Jane and her puppy dog eyes. Mary Jane Upton - the daughter of Mayor William Upton of Belleville, New Jersey - was not the goody-two-shoes future obedient housewife that everyone thought she was. Of course, she had a persona that she put on at home and around her father’s friends and important guests, but when she was at school, she was known as Mary Jane Two-Lips. How did she get that nickname? One of the boys said that Mary Jane let him kiss her on both of her lips - on her face and in her skirt. I didn’t know how true the rumour was, but it was no lie that Mary Jane liked to go to parties and dances. She was a social butterfly, while I really was not.</p><p>“It’ll be fun!” Mary Jane had said to me. “I have a pretty dress you can borrow.”</p><p>“Is it big, fluffy and pink?” I asked her, rolling my eyes. My fashion sense was nothing like Mary Jane’s, which was somewhat similar to another girl in our grade, Delaney Callaghan. Mary Jane was a bit more muted, but Delaney loved her big pink dresses and anything that wasn’t the latest style she gave to Mary Jane, who tried to dress me in them. No, I wore mostly plaid skirts that fell mid-calf, as was the fashion in the mid-1950s for American teenage girls, along with an ordinary blouse, a sweater if it were chilly outside, ankle-high socks and brown loafers, my dark hair tied back into a ponytail.</p><p>“No... It’s big, fluffy and <em> yellow </em>,” Mary Jane said smugly, pulling the offending garment out of her closet to show me.</p><p>“Mare, I can't wear that. I’m not giving everyone another reason to laugh at me. If I deviate any way from what’s normally expected of me, I’ll be mocked senseless. It’s already out of character for me to even <em> go </em> to the dance,” I told her.</p><p>“Kat, who <em> cares </em> what everyone else thinks? You’ll be having a good time! What do they matter?” Mary Jane asked me. She wouldn’t know, of course, what it feels like being mocked for your heritage, your race and the colour of your skin.</p><p>My parents worked hard to get the school district to let me attend the white school, which was considerably nicer than the school for children of colour. The school for children of colour, St. Gideon’s, was where our neighbour and my friend, Gary Harris, went, and he talked all the time about how the education there was shit compared to the education at the white school. Their school lunches were often served stale, and it wasn’t uncommon for Gary to have what I had at the white school, Thomas Edison School, the previous day. The reason why I was even considered for attending St. Gideon’s was because I was of Roma descent, commonly considered a ‘gypsy’. I had olive-coloured skin and uncharacteristically silver eyes, but I was pale enough to be considered ‘white passing’, hence why I was allowed to attend Thomas Edison.</p><p>I was born in Romania in the Spring of 1940, right at the height of war in Europe. My family, the size of which I have no idea, was sent to a concentration camp within my first year, where I was hidden until the camp was liberated in 1944. No one claimed me as their child, and I know very little about that period of my life and have no memory of my birth parents, only that my name was Katryna and that I was an orphan. I was later sent to live in an orphanage in London, where I lived for about a year and a half before I was adopted by an American family, the Everly family. That is how a Roma girl ended up in the wannabe-city of Belleville, New Jersey. My adoptive family was white and they were often criticised for adopting a child of colour, but they never cared. They loved me as if I were their own, even though they had a child of their own, Penelope, called Penny. Dad had always said that they felt they had to adopt me, saying, “I believe you have the power to change the world, Kit.” That was his nickname for me - Kit.</p><p>I came to love my adoptive father as if he were my own and we grew very close. He would teach me to sing and we sang a lot of songs together. He was always there when I needed advice and was my first best friend. In 1950, America went to war again, this time with Korea, and in 1951, my father’s number was called and he was drafted into the Korean War. A lot of men from our neighbourhood were drafted - Gary’s father, the Haverlanes next door, even Delaney’s father, but only Mr. Callaghan came back. Mr. Harris and my father were killed in Korea, and with Mr. Harris went Mrs. Harris, who could not stand being without her husband. I never understood how Mrs. Harris could just abandon her son like that, but her close friend across the street, Helen Haverlane, gladly accepted Gary into her family and loved him like one of her own. At first, Gary seemed okay with it, until kids of the neighbourhood started mocking him for living with a white family. It made him push the Haverlanes away, but they still never left his side.</p><p>While Mary Jane was putting on her own puffy lilac dress, I was making sure that the numbers tattooed on my arm from my days in the concentration camp were well covered. Nobody outside of my immediate family knew that I was orphaned by Hitler and his hatred of minorities - that would just be more ammunition for them to use against me - so I always made sure to cover up the numbers. “Are you ready to go?” Mary Jane asked me, pinching her cheeks to pinken them up the way I’d seen her mother do many times.</p><p>“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, still reluctant to go, and we bid farewell to her parents and headed out to the dance, Mary Jane prattling on about dreams only a fifteen-year-old girl would have.</p><p>Belleville is a small industrial town that isn’t too far from New York City. It’s densely populated, with around thirty thousand people living within the town limits, and the amount of people who work in Belleville likely doubles the population. Surrounded by Nutley, Lyndhurst, Kearny, Newark, East Orange and other small towns, Belleville was, and still is, sandwiched between the already dense population of northern New Jersey. The homes are close together, the roads are tight and there’s a hint of pollution in the air we breathed - there were, after all, factories that resided in the industrial parts of northern New Jersey. Culturally, we called it Taylor Ham, many of us acted like we were from New York City (I never did, for the record. It was mostly the ‘bad boys’ who did that), we even produced Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Belleville was home to a lot of artists, and we somehow managed to fit over sixty miles of road into a piece of land that was only three and a half square miles.</p><p>There were a lot of schools in Belleville, but our neighbourhood went to two - St. Gideon’s for children of colour, which would actually close down in 1958, after Gary had already graduated, and Thomas Edison School. Mary Jane was friends with most people at our school, while I was pretty much only friends with Mary Jane and a few other kids in addition to Gary from St. Gideon’s. Thankfully, our school was nearby, because Belleville’s streets weren’t the safest to walk down, especially at night - and they still aren’t. We arrived at the school and, ignoring the many young couples making out in the hallways, made our way to the gymnasium, where the dance was decorated with a theme of ‘A Night In Verona’. The decorating committee, of which Delaney Callaghan was in charge of and Mary Jane was a part of, settled on Romeo and Juliet as a theme.</p><p>“Doesn’t it look great?” Mary Jane asked me. I glanced up at the streamers that crossed the ceiling and at the balloons that both hung from the ceiling and were loose on the floor, thinking it to be impractical to decorate the room for one night, so I just shrugged.</p><p>“Looks... exactly like I would have expected from a high school dance,” I said. We chose to sit down at a table while Mary Jane’s date, some guy I didn’t even remember the name of, offered to get us food and a cup of punch, and when he came back without anything for me wanting to dance with Mary Jane, she went off with him while I stalked off to the snack table. There, a snooty-looking boy raised his nose at me while he combed over my dress.</p><p>“You look stupid tonight, Everly,” he said crudely.</p><p>“Better than looking stupid all the time, Cornish,” I said to him, and he narrowed his eyes.</p><p>“You’d better watch how you talk to me. I don’t care if they let you come to this school. Coloured people don’t belong here,” said Cornish, and I rolled my eyes, tired of hearing the same thing almost every day. And this was in a place they called us equal? <em> Technically </em>, all children were welcome to attend Thomas Edison, but the school board generally rejected students of colour, while St. Gideon’s accepted everyone, but pretty much all of their students were students of colour.</p><p>“People without brains don’t belong here, either, but somehow they let you in,” I told him, and he now glared at me.</p><p>“I don’t care that you’re a girl, I’ll string you up and-”</p><p>“Don’t you say another word, Tim,” I heard a voice behind me say - a familiar voice, one that made my heart skip a beat even though I didn’t know why it did.</p><p>“Whatever, Melnyk. Take your golliwog and get the hell outta here,” Tim Cornish said, and I raised my eyebrow.</p><p>“Golliwog? Like the doll?” I asked him. Golliwogs were these dolls that were a caricature of black people and they were viewed as quite racist by people of colour. “I’m Roma, not African. For god’s sake, if you’re going to call me any racial slur, at least call me the right one.”</p><p>“He shouldn’t be using any racial slurs at all,” Peter Melnyk, the boy who came to my defence that I still hadn’t looked at, said behind me. I felt his hand on my wrist and he started to pull me away. “Come on, Kat, he’s not worth your time.” I finally turned to look at him, although all I was seeing was the back of his head, covered in honey golden curls, as he pulled me away from the other kids, and when we were finally off to the side on our own, he turned to look at me with his beautiful sky blue eyes.</p><p>Peter Melnyk was a boy who I shared some of my classes with, but we never spoke. He was handsome, and every girl in our grade was head over heels in love with him - except for Mary Jane, but I’ll get into that later. He was known to be kind and held no judgement for anyone, and he didn’t care what anyone thought about him. If kids made fun of him for defending other kids of colour, he didn’t let it bother him, and on top of that, he was the star of the school’s football team and he was on the wrestling team, so no one dared to threaten him physically. I never wanted to be thought of as a silly swooning teenager like all the other girls, but when it came to Peter, I couldn’t stop my heart from racing.</p><p>“Y-You didn’t have to do that,” I told him, trying not to meet his eyes. “I can handle myself just fine on my own.”</p><p>“I know you can,” he told me. “I just wanted to see him squirm.” He smiled at me kindly, his beautiful blue eyes so sincere, and as much as I wanted to let butterflies flutter about my stomach, I steeled my face and cleared my throat.</p><p>“What do you want, then?” I asked him, and he raised an eyebrow. “Don’t act all confused, no one does anything purely because they feel like it. People do things when they want something, so what do you want?”</p><p>“I didn’t defend you from Tim Cornish because I wanted something from you, but since you’re asking, a dance wouldn’t hurt,” he told me, and it was my turn to raise an eyebrow.</p><p>“A dance?” I asked, and he nodded. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll get made fun of for dancing with me?”</p><p>“I just defended you in front of the biggest gossip in the school. Why would I be afraid of getting made fun of for dancing with you?”</p><p>“I dunno, it’s different than defending someone! Dancing is more... intimate.”</p><p>“Intimate?” He raised an eyebrow cheekily.</p><p>“Shut up. It’s more intimate than talking. You know, it’s all... closer and all...”</p><p>“I’m not ashamed to be seen with you and I’m not embarrassed to dance with you. I do have something I want to tell you, though, but I’ll only tell you if you agree to dance with me.”</p><p>“So now you’re bribing me?” I teased, and he smiled.</p><p>“If that’s what it takes to get you to dance with me, then sure, I’m bribing you.” I couldn’t help but wonder why Peter Melnyk was so interested in me tonight - we’d never spoken to each other beyond the occasional shared glance - and I hoped that this wasn’t some ploy to embarrass me. Peter was never known to be the type to play such a nasty prank on someone, so I made the risky decision of choosing to trust him.</p><p>“All right, fine. I’ll dance with you, but only one dance. I really am not fond of dancing,” I told him.</p><p>“I think I’ll be able to change your mind,” he said with a smile and a wink, and he held out his hand.</p><p>“What, right now?” I asked, surprised. I wasn’t expecting him to want to dance with me so soon. “You really want to waste your one dance on this song?” It wasn’t a good dancing song, in my opinion, but then it ended and a slower song led by saxophones started playing. With raised eyebrows, I glanced at his cheeky grin, wondering if he did that on purpose, before accepting his outstretched hand and letting him lead me to the dance floor. He put one of his hands on my waist and took my hand in his, and I rested my free hand on his shoulder. When we started moving together, my eyes finally locked on his, and it was like we were the only two kids in the room. “Did you know that song was coming on next?” At this, Peter chuckled.</p><p>“No, but I was on the dance committee in the fall and there’s a pattern to how we play songs. We play two fast ones, then a slow one, then a fast one, then two slow ones and then back to the beginning,” he told me.</p><p>“Well, aren’t you clever,” I told him. “So what’s this ‘something’ that you want to tell me, hm?” It was his turn to turn pink, and he glanced away from my eyes nervously.</p><p>“Uh... Right, that...”</p><p>“What’s this? Has Peter Melnyk lost his words?” Peter was also the star of the school’s debate team and he was quite skilled with words. Our teachers said he had a golden tongue and that he was a very gifted public speaker. He chuckled, then shook his head.</p><p>“Just got a little nervous. I get that way around you, quite a lot, actually...”</p><p>“Why’s that? You afraid I’m going to curse you like the other boys are?” He chuckled again.</p><p>“No, no. I just...” He let out a sigh. “Kat, I... I’m moving away, right after the school year ends next week. In fact, right after the last day, I have to help finish packing the moving van and we’re going to head out on the road.”</p><p>“You’re moving?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how that was relevant to me, but the news was still surprising. Never seeing Peter’s handsome face or his sweet personality ever again? “Where?”</p><p>“Southern California, about an hour out of Los Angeles. Mom’s family is from there and her mother isn’t doing very well so she wants to be closer, and Dad thinks he can run a popular diner in the city. He says he wants to ‘bring a little bit of Jersey to Southern California’,” Peter said with a chuckle. “Apparently diners are a Jersey thing, and they don’t have them as much as we do in other states.”</p><p>“That’s... so strange,” I said, still wondering why this was so important for me to hear. “Why are you telling me this, Peter? We’ve never even... spoken before, I... I don’t want to sound rude, but I’m confused.”</p><p>“I know, I... I’m getting to that part...” he replied. “Kat... I... I really like you... a lot. I’ve always been so afraid to talk to you - not because I’m embarrassed to be talking to you! Not at all! But I... I was always... afraid, that... that you... that you wouldn’t like me.”</p><p>“Wh- Peter...” Well, that was unexpected. Was he being serious? Was he saying this to make fun of me? Other boys have asked me out on dates before as a joke before so I didn’t feel I could trust that Peter was being sincere.</p><p>“I just... I had to tell you before I... before I never saw you again. I’ve liked you ever since we were kids. I know you probably think I’m lying, but I swear that I’m not! I... I really, really like you, Kat...”</p><p>“I... I don’t know what to say...”</p><p>“You don’t have to say anything. You don’t even have to return my feelings, I just... I had to tell you. We don’t even have to talk about it anymore if you’d prefer.”</p><p>“Peter, it... it’s all right...” Was it? I really couldn’t comprehend my own feelings, let alone Peter’s. All these years, he had feelings for me? And he never said anything to me? This had to be some kind of joke or a prank or something. He probably wasn’t actually moving, he was setting me up for a nasty prank. But would Peter Melnyk <em> actually </em> do that? I couldn’t be too sure, so I vowed to guard my heart for as long as I had to put up with him.</p><p>We danced in silence after that, and by that point, I was tired and had had my fill of socialising and I told Peter that I wanted to go home, so he offered to walk me home. “You don’t have to do that,” I told him.</p><p>“You’re not walking alone on these streets at night. I can’t let you do that,” he told me, refusing to take no for an answer, and so we left the gym and he began to walk me home.</p><p>“So, you’re really moving, huh?” I asked, baiting him to mess up on his story. “It’s a shame we couldn’t get to know each other better beforehand.”</p><p>“I only wish that I had had the nerve to talk to you sooner, Kat. I just... You’re so beautiful and fascinating and nothing like the other girls. They’re all the same and you’re... different.”</p><p>“Different how?”</p><p>“You don’t care about things that other girls your age do. You’re quiet and not some silly giggling schoolgirl. When you’re not quiet, you’re not afraid to let your voice be heard... and you have a beautiful singing voice.” At this, I scoffed.</p><p>“You’ve never even heard my singing voice.”</p><p>“I have, but I guess you don’t remember. It was a long time ago, but you and your dad were singing in the park together. My family and I were there to play on the playground and your sister was on the playground, too, but you weren’t. You were singing with your dad and I remember thinking that you had the most beautiful singing voice that I had ever heard.”</p><p>“You’ve gone deaf, I think.”</p><p>“No, I’m serious, Kat. You should be a singer.”</p><p>“I haven’t sang since Dad died in Korea,” I told him. I don’t know why I told him something so personal, but it just slipped out and I couldn’t stop myself.</p><p>“I really am sorry about your dad. It’s not fair, everything you’ve been through.”</p><p>“You don’t even know what I’ve been through.”</p><p>“No, but I’ve heard talk. I know you came from Europe after the war... I’m sorry, I know that’s personal.”</p><p>“Who the hell is talking about me?”</p><p>“No one, Kat. It doesn’t matter.” Now I was angry. He just admitted to talking about me behind my back and now he was lying about it?</p><p>“Who did you hear that from?” I demanded.</p><p>“My mother, who goes to the same book club as your mother,” Peter told me. Oh, so my adoptive mother thought she could just tell everyone about me, huh?</p><p>“What happened to me is <em> my </em> past. No one else needs to know about it,” I said with a touch of anger.</p><p>“I know, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up,” Peter said, seemingly genuinely sincere, and I let out a sigh.</p><p>“No, you shouldn’t have. Just... don’t do it again,” I said, and he nodded as we continued to my home. When we finally arrived, I stopped in front of the gate and looked at him. “Well, this is me. Thanks for... walking me home, I suppose.”</p><p>“I’m glad to,” Peter said. We both stood awkwardly quiet for a moment.</p><p>“I, er... better get inside. Goodnight,” I said, and I started to open the gate.</p><p>“Wait,” said Peter, surprising me. “Can I... Can I kiss you goodnight?”</p><p>Could he kiss me goodnight? If this was a nasty prank, then kissing me would be the icing on the cake. He’d have so much power over me, telling all the boys at school that the coloured girl kissed him and mocking me senseless. But if he was sincere... Why would he be? Everyone got off on making fun of me. But if he was... then maybe he genuinely wanted to kiss me. Maybe he actually thought I was pretty. Perhaps he really wasn’t like all the other boys and he genuinely was as kind as he was rumoured to be. I couldn’t read his mind. His body language said that he was sincere, but my guarded heart wouldn’t let me trust him. I couldn’t trust him. I couldn’t trust anyone.</p><p>“No,” I said. “No, I... I don’t want to be kissed.” The hopeful look in his handsome blue eyes fell to one of sadness, and he looked down at his feet, nodding gently.</p><p>“That’s okay... it’s your choice,” he said, and then he looked up at me. “Goodnight, Kat. Maybe I’ll see you again someday.” He gave me a subtle smile, hiding the pain that his eyes told me he so obviously felt, and then he turned and walked away. I thought about calling after him and giving him the kiss he so desperately wanted, but I was so afraid of being wrong about him that I just let him walk away - I had no idea how much I would come to regret that decision.</p><p>Two weeks later, when walking around town with Mary Jane and Penny, we passed the old Melnyk Diner, which had been in the Melnyk family for nearly fifty years - and saw that its name had been changed to the Monarch Diner. When I asked Mary Jane, she told me that Peter had moved away last week, and when we finally got home and I was locked securely away in my room, I cried myself to sleep, having let the one boy who truly, genuinely liked me walk away.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Was Peter telling the truth? How will this affect Kat?</p><p>Please review!</p><p>*The way I set this up, there will be ten storylines in total, but they should be fairly easy to keep track of. I’ll list what storyline each chapter is a part of.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Telstar</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>1955 - 1963. Kat recalls what she did in the years following her meeting with Peter, bridging the gap between who she was and who she would become.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>‘Telstar’ — The Tornadoes</p>
<p>Storyline 1</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Kat: 1955 - 1963</strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“Revolutions begin in the shadows, where they are only heard and not yet seen, and when they finally make themselves known to the world, they are impossible to stop.” - Unknown</span>
  </em>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>The years between the two most tumultuous points of my life were relatively tame. I continued to be the victim of bullying throughout the rest of high school, but I survived it, and like many of my classmates, I went off to college after I graduated in 1958. Many of the girls went to college to get degrees in art and literature, but most of them went for what was called an MRS degree - going to college with the intention of finding a husband. Back in the 50s, unfortunately, college was not for women to refine their education, but rather to put them closer to other young men in hopes of catching a husband. That’s what Delaney Callaghan did, and she came back in 1960 engaged to a boy from Princeton. Mary Jane, too, did the same, but she wasn’t interested in capturing a husband from the pool of eligible bachelors there - she was interested in Gary.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Ever since we were young, Mary Jane had been interested in Gary, even though he was black. She didn’t care at all, actually, but her parents sure did. They forbid her from seeing him, but of course, that didn’t stop her. I truly believed that she was in love with Gary, and Gary seemed to be interested in her, too, on the outside. We used to drive down to the shore, to Point Pleasant or Seaside Heights or Asbury Park, and walk the boardwalk. There, nobody recognised them, and it was easier for them to be together. When we were in Belleville, however, they had to be discreet, and sometimes, Gary would even sneak into her room late at night.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gary, on the other hand, was my closest friend growing up. Like me, he was being raised by a white family, although that didn’t start until 1951, and he was born in 1938 - two years older than myself. But before that, we were friends simply because we got along and we liked each other, and our families were good friends. Mrs. Harris, a kindly woman who was more meek than vocal, latched onto my mother as another woman and the two were often inseparable. It was their friendship, along with that of Mrs. Haverlane, that improved quite a few race relations among the women of Belleville, and the same went for Mr. Harris and my father. They were quite disappointed when they learned that they would be in two separate divisions in the army, and even now, I’m not sure if Mr. Harris, who died after my father, knew that he had died before he, too, was killed. Because the relationships between our parents were so close, Gary and I grew up close, too, although he never liked that I attended the white school, and he made sure I knew that. Gary had always been a free spirit with a fire inside of him that was difficult to tame, but so was I, and that’s why Gary, well... he just got me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Mary Jane was devastated when Gary decided he was going to head out west to California in 1961. It was so sudden and unexpected, but Gary insisted that it was what he wanted. “They don’t treat people of colour well out there,” Mary Jane had told him when the three of us were down at the shore after he had broken the news.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They don’t treat people of colour well here, either,” said Gary. “I just need a change of scenery. I’m ready to leave this shithole of a state.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“This ‘shithole of a state’ is your home, Gary, and your family is here, too,” I told him, and he scoffed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You mean the white people that adopted me? They’re not my family, Kat. You know that,” Gary said somewhat harshly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But they’re the closest thing to a family that you have,” I reminded him. “The Haverlanes didn’t have to take you in, but they did, and they love you as if you’re one of their own.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But I ain’t, am I?” Gary snapped, surprising both Mary Jane and I. “You know what it’s like being coloured and being brought up by white people. They strip you of your identity and your culture.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your culture is the same as ours, Gary. We’re neighbours, for fuck’s sake,” I told him, and he laughed.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t get it... You’re so damn whitewashed already,” Gary told me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Excuse me?” I asked him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You’ve forgotten who you are. You’re no white girl, Kat. I don’t know how you’ve forgotten that when no one lets you,” he replied.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kat hasn’t forgotten that, Gary. It’s not the same for her, she’s not black,” Mary Jane said in my defence.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Girl, you don’t get it at all,” said Gary in response.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know what there is to ‘get’. We’re all still people. Cut us all open and we’re the same damn colour. I work in a hospital, trust me, I know,” I chimed in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It ain’t like that, though. We’re up north, we’re supposed to be equal here, but we’re not. There’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>us</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and there’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>them</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Gary told me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Your girlfriend is one of ‘them’,” I reminded him, and he only shook his head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There’s people out in Los Angeles... People who get it. People who get </span>
  <em>
    <span>me</span>
  </em>
  <span>. That’s why I’m going out there,” he told us.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Who told you that, hm?” I asked him, a tone of disbelief in my voice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They have a newsletter that circulates all around the country. Found it last time I was in the city,” he told me. “You can’t stop me. I’m going out there.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Didn’t say I was going to try,” I replied.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“But what about us?” Mary Jane asked him. “I heard they’re more progressive out there. Maybe we can be together! You know, I heard they allow interracial marriage there. They have for a long time.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I gotta get me a house first, babe. Once I got one, you can come out and live with me,” Gary told her with no sincerity whatsoever in his voice, but she didn’t pick up on that. No, Mary Jane was blind to anything she didn’t want to see and she didn’t want to see that the love that she and Gary shared was actually quite one-sided. But I saw through it, and part of me hated how he used Mary Jane’s kindness and affections for his personal gain. He didn’t deserve someone like her, but he had her anyway. He moved away and he didn’t take Mary Jane with him, and she was inconsolable for quite a while, and that was the first strain in my friendship with Gary.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>All that aside, when I went off to school in 1958, I went to a three-year nursing program at the College of New Jersey in Ewing, near the state’s capitol. When I graduated in 1961, I went to an accelerated fifteen month midwifery program and graduated in 1962, and after four and a half years of education, I became a midwife at the Newark Beth Israel Hospital in Newark. My little sister, Penny, would follow in my footsteps, too, after she graduated from school in 1962, although her path in medicine was only just beginning.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One thing that I didn’t care for about nursing school was the fact that the program was adamant that only single women become nurses, and if a student was married or impregnated, she was immediately terminated from the program. I thought that to be quite harsh, as married women made excellent nurses just as well as single women, but it was purely because young women in the late 50s and early 60s were pressured to pursue husbands, not careers. I was grateful to have a mother who did not pressure me to search for a husband, but I watched as young girls I graduated with went off, got married and went from being the precious jewel of their parents’ home to the precious jewel of their husbands’ home, always confined to the house and expected to serve their husbands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I never forgot about Peter, either, but the idea of love and marriage was not my biggest priority. I was focused on me and myself only, so Peter slipped to the back of my mind. Occasionally, I thought about him out of the blue when something reminded me of him, or I had a dream about him. For years, I wished I’d just kissed him, wondering what it felt like to kiss his lips. I imagined they’d be soft and warm, and he’d probably smell like his family’s diner. I imagined being held by his strong arms would be comforting, but I would never know. For that reason, I told myself not to think of him, and as time went on, I slowly forgot about him, or at least buried the memory of him deep within my mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So that’s what I did. Went to school, defied gender stereotypes and dedicated my life to bringing babies into the world. I thought that it was what I wanted to do - be in a position where I could be in women’s health and maybe help make a small difference in a woman’s life, but then I realised that it wasn’t midwifery that was calling to me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The 1950s were only the start of the revolution to come, when the first sparks from the shadows became visible. Whispers of change had already sent ripples across the nation for decades, but now, the beast that oppression, misogyny, racism and more had created was waking up from its slumber, and it would spark a fire in the hearts of every person in the nation who felt the thumb of a government unwilling to change. My spark came in early 1963, in the form of a small protest in the small park across from the hospital...</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Be My Baby</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Summer 1962. Peter reflects on what he’s been up to and tells the story of his family. He meets the hermit of Espíritu and befriends him.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>“Be My Baby” — The Searchers</p><p>Storyline 2</p><p>Also featured: ‘Starlit Hour’ — Ella Fitzgerald</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Peter: Summer 1962</strong>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em> “Oh , since the day I saw you, I have been waiting for you. You know I will adore you ‘till eternity...” — The Searchers</em>
</p><hr/><p>I never forgot about Kat Everly. I couldn’t, not when I’d been in love with her for as long as I had been. Sure, we were just kids, but something told me that Kat was ‘the one’. My dad told me once that he knew a girl in school that he just knew was ‘the one’ but he kept quiet because he was shy and afraid she wouldn’t love him - sound familiar? Anyway, because he never said anything, she fell in love with someone else, leaving him without the girl that he loved more than anything in the world. I guess we’re all doomed to make the same mistakes as our parents because now, I’ll never see Kat again. She probably found herself a husband already and has a beautiful family with them. Maybe she married Gary Harris. In New Jersey, there weren’t any laws against interracial marriage, it was just often frowned upon, but then again, Kat wasn’t white either, and it seemed that those kinds of laws only applied to black and white people. I remember seeing her with Gary all the time. I mean, I’d heard rumours that Gary was more interested in Mary Jane Upton, which would be even more shocking to the town, but I loved Kat, and with my luck, Gary Harris won her over.</p><p>I tried to tell myself to forget about Kat Everly, but I just couldn’t. There were girls at my new school who were pretty and all, but they just weren’t Kat. I couldn’t dedicate myself to another girl when my heart only belonged to her. My older brothers made fun of me for it. Chris, the oldest, didn’t engage so much in teasing me, but Don, who was two years older than me, wouldn’t let my choosing to be single go without being mocked. My brothers knew about my feelings for Kat, of course, and they’d both tried to help me forget her, but it just couldn’t be done. I was doomed to spend the rest of my life alone, like the hermit who lived out in the hovel in the desert.</p><p>When my family moved to California in 1955, we moved to a small town called Espíritu, which was Spanish for ‘spirit’. We were on the leeward side of the San Gabriel mountains right where the Mojave Desert ran into them. This was where Mom was from and she always said she’d hated living in this small town, which was why she went to school in New York. She went to school for art and met my father when he was on a trip with his father to buy supplies for the diner in the city. Espíritu was as dry and yellow as she had always said it was growing up. We’d visited a couple of times, of course, to see Grandma and Grandpa, but the last time we were here was when Grandpa died in 1949, when I was nine years old. After that, Mom refused to come back, mostly because she had a bad relationship with Grandma. Grandma had a bad relationship with both Mom and Aunt Maddie, actually. She was neglectful to both of them and a raging alcoholic, and everything Mom did just wasn’t enough for Grandma. Grandma died a bitter woman in 1960, and we just stayed in California. After Grandma died, Mom wanted to move to Los Angeles, but I hated the business of the city and opted to move into Grandma’s home while my family found a place in the city. I still worked at the diner four days a week, making the hour commute at dawn and enjoying the sunrise over the desert, and when I was off, I cleaned up Grandma’s house and turned it into my home, or I painted landscapes of the desert - like Mom, I was a gifted painter, not to brag.</p><p>One of my days off, in February of 1962, I was taking a walk along the outskirts of Espíritu when I came across the hovel where ‘the hermit of Espíritu’ lived. Mom said he’d lived there forever, although she didn’t know why, but she said he was dangerous and to not bother him. I saw the aging man come out of his hovel and he looked, from a distance, just like the old man my mother had described. I felt for the man, who looked pained by demons that he had to fight off alone, and I couldn’t stop myself from wanting to help this poor old man. “Excuse me, sir?” I said cautiously, not wanting to alarm the old man. He froze, and when he turned to look at me, I realised that he wasn’t nearly as old as Mom had thought he was - this man was no older than thirty-five or forty.</p><p>“Get the fuck off my property, boy,” he hissed at me with a warning tone, his bright blue eyes narrowing at me from between his messy blonde locks that were poking out beneath a brown Stetson.</p><p>“Sir, my name’s Peter Melnyk, I just wanted to see-” I tried again, but the gruff man cut me off and pulled a pocket knife out from his jeans, opening it and pointing it at me.</p><p>“I said get the <em> fuck </em> off my property, boy!” he shouted, and I raised my hands and backed away.</p><p>“Okay... okay... I’m sorry I bothered you,” I said, backing away, and I rushed off the man’s land. He looked pale and sickly, and he looked as if he hadn’t had a proper meal in days, maybe more. I let a couple more days pass, so as not to alarm him, and I put together a meal and packaged it up to bring by. When I arrived at his hovel, all was silent, and I knocked on the door hoping he wouldn’t threaten to harm me again, but there was no answer. I knocked again - still no answer, and with a sigh, I left the packaged food on his porch and left. I came back again two days later with another, finding the package gone from his porch and the man sitting in a chair staring at me from under the brim of his Stetson. Beside him, leaning on the chair, was a shotgun.</p><p>“You don’t quit, do ya?” he asked me, taking a sip from his flask and letting out a loud burp.</p><p>“You looked like you haven’t eaten in a while, so I wanted to bring you something to eat. My family owns a diner in the city and we have a lot of leftovers,” I told him.</p><p>“I came out here ‘cause I wanted to be left alone. You ain’t leavin’ me alone,” the man said gruffly. I eyed his shotgun next to him, watching for any sign that he had any intention of grabbing it and shooting me.</p><p>“I know,” I said.</p><p>“You don’t know nothin’, boy.”</p><p>“Maybe not, but I know what it’s like to die alone. I’ve seen it. My grandmother was Debbie Wexley. She died two years ago now, and she was miserable. No one deserves to be miserable, and no one deserves to be isolated and alone no matter what they’ve done.”</p><p>“I’ve killed people. Don’t that scare ya?”</p><p>“So did my dad. He was a soldier during the war.”</p><p>“Korea?” I shook my head.</p><p>“Pacific front. Midway and other islands. He was in the navy.” The man was silent. “I know a soldier when I see one... He gets that same distant look in his eye and sometimes, he still wakes up screaming twenty years later.” The man glanced down at his flask in his hand before looking up at me again.</p><p>“What’s your name, kid?”</p><p>“Peter Melnyk.”</p><p>“Melnyk. That’s Slavic.”</p><p>“My grandparents came over from Ukraine in 1917. My dad was born two years later.”</p><p>“Where you from? You don’t sound like you’re from ‘round these parts.”</p><p>“New Jersey, but I’ve been living here since ‘55.” The man nodded.</p><p>“I trained in Jersey, for the war. Fort Dix, ‘43.”</p><p>“That’s a bit far from where I lived. I’m from Belleville, outside of Newark.”</p><p>“Hmph. Never heard of it.” I couldn’t help but chuckle.</p><p>“It’s a small town, but Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons came from Belleville. I knew them growing up, or at least had a couple run-ins with them. They wouldn’t remember me, we weren’t friends or anything.”</p><p>“What’d ya lose that makes ya wanna befriend someone cranky old hermit who likes a drink?”</p><p>“Excuse me?”</p><p>“What’d ya lose? A girl?” I paused for a moment. This man, who was hardly sober, seemed to be able to read me like an open book.</p><p>“I wouldn’t say I lost her. I never even had her... but I can’t let her go.”</p><p>“Ain’t that the truth,” said the man, and he took a sip of his flask. “I don’t mind you bringin’ food but don’t bug me more than once a week. Leave it at the door, don’t knock on the door, don’t do nothin’. You can sit with me if ya like one day a week, but no more than that. Now, you’ve been buggin’ me enough, now get lost.” I couldn’t stop myself from smiling, having succeeded at working my way into the heart of this grumpy old drunk somehow.</p><p>“What’s your name?” I asked him.</p><p>“Harvey. That’s all ya need to know,” he told me gruffly, drinking from his flask again.</p><p>“Harvey,” I repeated. “Well, here, Harvey, here’s another meal.” I brought the food package closer to him and set it on top of a barrel. “I’ll see you next week.” Stuffing my hands into my pockets, I left the old man’s property, and after glancing over my shoulder at him one more time, I thought I could see a hint of a smile on the old man’s face.</p><p>Afterwards, I asked my dad if he ever knew a Harvey when he was in the navy. “None that survived,” he told me. “Why? Did you meet someone who said they knew me?”</p><p>“No, but I met the old hermit that Mom always said to stay away from,” I told him.</p><p>“Peter!” Mom exclaimed when she heard me. “That man is dangerous! He threatened a group of kids with a gun, and your brother was one of them!”</p><p>“He’s not as dangerous as you think, Mom, he’s just lonely,” I said. “He said his name was Harvey, and based on how he reacted, I think he was in the Pacific during the war, but I guess not the navy. He trained at Fort Dix, though, in 1943.”</p><p>“Well, he could have been. I didn’t know every sailor on every ship, son,” Dad told me.</p><p>“Maybe. He said I could visit him once a week, so maybe he’ll open up to me,” I replied.</p><p>“I don’t want you going back to that hovel again, Peter. That old man is dangerous,” Mom said firmly.</p><p>“Mom, I’m an adult and I live alone. He’s really not that bad... and he’s not old, either. He’s younger than you. Both of you,” I told my parents.</p><p>“Well, if you get a name, let me know. There’s a veterans’ club downtown and maybe I can look him up in the records,” Dad told me, and I smiled and nodded.</p><p>“Caseo, don’t encourage him. What if we find him dead because he was shot by that lunatic?” Mom asked him.</p><p>“Mells, relax. I know men like him. This man doesn’t want to kill anyone ever again. Pete will be fine. I think it’s a good thing he’s making friends with this man. This Harvey probably needs one,” Dad said proudly. Mom was not at all happy about me wanting to befriend Harvey, but like Dad, I didn’t believe he was a threat to me.</p><p>Every week on Wednesday, I went to visit Harvey, and we mostly talked about me and my past when we did talk, and when we didn’t, we sat, listening to music and watching the sunset. Harvey had a record he liked to play, Ella Fitzgerald’s ‘Starlit Hour’ that was old and scratched and hardly playable. He wouldn’t tell me why he listened to that song so much, but something told me it had to do with a girl that he lost. I bought him a new copy at a record store after one of my shifts at the diner and he seemed pleased to be able to listen to the song again, and I watched him close his eyes, losing himself in whatever memory the song brought back.</p><p>Visiting Harvey distracted me from the pain of missing Kat Everly, but it was still there. The night I bought him the new copy of the song, I had a dream that it was 1943 and I was a soldier going off to war. It was my last day before I was shipped off, and I was at a dance. Suddenly, Kat was in front of me, and we were dancing to Harvey’s song. Right as our lips began to meet, upon the lyric <em> ‘Let us forget tomorrow’ </em>, I woke up, and once again, my heart ached for what I couldn’t have.</p><p>I longed for Kat, but she was never mine. She would never be mine. I was destined to live like Harvey - alone, longing for someone that I never had, that I could never have.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Will the hermit of Espíritu ever open up to Peter? What is it about Peter that makes this hermit trust him?</p><p>Please review!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. No More Bomb</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>December, 1963. Kat meets a group of young people protesting the atomic bomb, but her mother isn’t very fond of what they represent.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>“No More Bomb” — the Goldbriars</p>
<p>Storyline 1</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Kat: December, 1963</strong>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>“The world may be full of corrosions, but it is a wise and an old one. And it just learned that atom explosions make much hotter wars than the cold one...” — the Goldbriars</span>
  </em>
</p>
<hr/>
<p>
  <span>On an uncharacteristically warm day in the middle of December while I was working at the hospital, I was working the front desk for the emergency department. I was copying notes from my notebook, which I carry around with me to all births, home and hospital, to a document that would be the official documentation of the birth, when I started hearing the sound of a faint chant. At first, I couldn’t make out what exactly the chant was saying, but I glanced up from my paperwork and saw a group of young people, not much younger than myself, protesting in the small park across the street from the hospital. It was a slow day, so I got up from the desk and made my way through the doors and stood outside in front of the hospital, wrapping my mint green sweater a little more tightly around me as the chants became clearer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“No more bomb! No more bomb! No more big bad bomb!” these kids were chanting over and over, and they held up picket signs indicating that they were against the atomic bomb. I couldn’t blame them, the atomic bomb was terrifying. While in nursing school,we briefly discussed the ill effects of the radiation burns that the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki received when the U.S. dropped the bombs on them in 1945. We had to learn in case the threat of atomic war became real and had to treat radiation burns. There were police around them, but the protest was quite peaceful. I glanced over my shoulder to see if anyone needed me at the desk, seeing no one, and then I crossed the street to get myself even closer to the protest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Excuse me,” I said, drawing the attention of a young woman. “What are you protesting?” I knew, of course, but I wanted to hear her explanation.</span>
</p>
<p>“The atomic bomb, of course. We think war is absolutely dreadful and there’s no need for such a horrid, destructive weapon,” she told me.</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t look familiar, are you and your group from around here?” I asked her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“We travel around quite a bit. We’re actually from San Francisco, but we go to major cities and spread the word about the atomic bomb and invite people to our meetings,” she told me, and then she bent down to a stack of papers at her feet, standing back up and handing it to me with a smile. “You can come, if you like. We’ll be discussing President Shaw’s overuse of the Pacific islands for testing atomic bombs.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Thank you,” I said, accepting the leaflet. “I might.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good! We hope to see you there. My name is Sarah, by the way,” she said.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Kat,” I told her. I had to turn back and return to the desk in the hospital, but I held the leaflet in my hands, which told of a meeting at a nearby community building in a couple of days. When I returned home from work that night, I began to unbutton the front of my uniform dress when I heard the television on in the living room. Standing in the doorframe, I watched as Penny, who was home for the weekend, and Mom watched President Shaw give a speech on the television about recent protests of the atomic bomb.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t know why any of you would even </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> to protest the atomic bomb. I mean, come on, the bomb saves us from the Japs! Without that bomb, we still could be fighting the war! We could have lost millions more men! Who’s to say they wouldn’t have attacked us again, like they did in Pearl Harbour? These dumb kids who keep protesting the bomb weren’t even old enough to be out of diapers during the war, of course they wouldn’t know. They’re just ungrateful for everything that their parents fought for,” Shaw was saying.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>President Charles Shaw was an oafish man who became President by circumstance only because of President Kennedy’s vice president. How he was allowed to do some of the things he was doing, I’ll never know. The man was racist, sexist and reeked of conservativism, so how he was the Democratic Vice President, we’ll still never know. In November of that year, the nation had the misfortune of that oaf becoming president when President Kennedy was shot in Dallas. He seemed so pleased with himself that there were rumours that Shaw himself was behind the assassination, but no evidence was ever found. Regardless, Shaw was quickly making America the joke of the world.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What an idiot,” Penny had said once Shaw’s speech was over.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Penny! You shouldn’t speak like that,” Mom told her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She’s right,” I chimed in. “How could someone as good as Kennedy let a man like that be our Vice President? Now we have to deal with him as our president. You know, he had no remorse for Kennedy’s death.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You don’t know that, Katryna. There are people who saw Shaw isn’t as bad as he looks on television,” Mom told me when she noticed me in the doorframe.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“When you’re the President of America, why would you </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> to act like that in public? Usually, it’s the opposite. A man is an ass in the privacy of his own home but you’re saying people say he’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>not</span>
  </em>
  <span> an ass at home, but is on television? Something is suspicious about that,” I told her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“He’s still the president so you shouldn’t worry, dear. I’m sure he knows what he’s doing,” Mom told me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That man has power. Any kind of man like that with any amount of power is a dangerous man,” I replied.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Nevermind all this negativity,” said Mom, brushing aside the negatives of society. “How was work?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“All right. It was very quiet today, not a lot of emergencies, which is good. There was a protest across the street, protesting the atomic bomb. A group from San Francisco,” I told her, and she let out a sigh.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Please tell me you didn’t talk to those beatniks,” said Mom.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I did, and you shouldn’t use that term like an insult. They’re artists. You liked the poems by Allen Ginsberg. He’s one of your ‘beatniks’,” I told her. “They want peace, Mom. There’s nothing wrong with wanting peace.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“There is when our safety is threatened every day by the Soviets,” said Mom. “You were so young when it all started.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So that’s everyone’s excuse for why the younger generation should shut up and let the adults do the talking, huh?” I asked. “President Shaw said the same thing. Personally, Mom, I think I do know what it’s like when my safety is threatened every day. Need I remind you where I came from?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You always use that excuse, Katryna, when you think you’re old enough for things you’re still too young to understand,” said Mom, moving past me and into the kitchen.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yes because my violent past is nothing but an excuse. I’d say it’s a pretty valid reason to hate war,” I replied.</span>
</p>
<p>“Without that war, you would have died in that camp, Katryna. That war was started because of the crimes that the Nazis were committing against your people,” Mom called from the kitchen.</p>
<p>
  <span>“And without violence, it wouldn’t have been necessary,” I said, heading up the stairs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Trying to make a world without violence is dreaming, Katryna. You need to be realistic. If there was no war, the communists would have taken over all of Korea and those poor people would be subjected to the horrible things the communists do,” Mom called after me.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Without that war, Dad would still be alive,” I told her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s a selfish way to think, Katryna. Dad gave his life protecting the freedom of the people of Korea, and America, too,” said Mom firmly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Dad didn’t give his life to protect the freedom of the people. The government took his life as payment for the idea of freedom,” said Penny from the living room.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Penelope, not you, too,” said Mom.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“The times are changing, Mother. The old road you walk is deteriorating, and our generation is paving a new one. Either walk it with us or get out of the way,” I told her firmly, and then I made my way up the stairs and into my room, Mom calling after me demanding I apologise for being rude. I wasn’t going to apologise for wanting a better world for the future.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>I still dreamed of the bombs. I could still smell the scent of burning flesh, and the putrid stench of the dirty and disease-ridden buildings full of Nazi prisoners of war. Jewish people, disabled people, homosexuals, the Roma, anyone who deviated from the idea of the perfect Aryan race, whether they intended to or not, became the victims of the Nazis. In my nightmares, I could hear the screams of a woman shouting my name, calling for me from the inky blackness of my memory, followed by a gunshot. I don’t know who that voice belonged to, or where my subconscious recalled the memory from, but I had reason to believe that it was my mother calling out to me. My </span>
  <em>
    <span>real</span>
  </em>
  <span> mother, the Roma woman who gave birth to me, who died protecting me. I never knew her name or her face, nor did I know the name and face of my father, nor any siblings I may have had. Was I the oldest, the youngest, or somewhere in between? The only remnants of those days that I had left was the old and faded tattoo on my forearm that I had received when I was only an infant, stripping me away of my name and my humanity and assigning a number as my only form of identification.</span>
</p>
<p>I didn’t care that my mother hated the fact that I was against war and violence. She told me I didn’t understand, that I was too young to know, but the trauma of my past still affected me into adulthood. I have a past that I cannot identify, and because of that, I desire peace in the world. No more children should have to suffer the way that I had. No more children should hear their names called in their nightmares, wondering if that is their only memory of their mother. I knew then that I couldn’t stay in Belleville forever. I had to do something to change the path that I was on, but I didn’t know where to start.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>With the seeds of change sowed, what will Kat do now that she’s found the spark of revolution? Where will it take her?</p>
<p>Please review!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Breaking Up Is Hard To Do</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>August, 1963. Delaney is introduced and so is her struggle with her identity.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>‘Breaking Up Is Hard To Do’ — Shelley Fabares</p><p>Storyline 4</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>Delaney; August, 1963</strong>
</p><hr/><p>
  <em> “They say that breaking up is hard to do. Now I know, I know that it’s true. Don’t say that this is the end. Instead of breaking up, I wish that we were making up again...” — Shelley Farbares</em>
</p><hr/><p>“Phew, okay,” I said to my reflection in the mirror of my vanity in my bedroom. “Brian, we’ve been engaged for three years. I know that’s a long time, and I know that you’ve asked for a wedding date several times and I said I still wasn’t ready every time...” I paused, and then groaned and laid my head down on the surface of the vanity. This was harder than I thought.</p><p>My name is Delaney Callaghan and I’m your typical blonde, blue-eyed housewife-in-training wearing the latest fashions in the brightest retro colours I could think of. In school, I was a cheerleader, and when I graduated, I did exactly what was expected of me - went to college under the guise of getting an education, but really, I was trying to catch a husband, and I was quite successful. Why wouldn’t I be? I was a pretty girl who looked the part of a perfect housewife, so I found a fiancé quickly. I’d been engaged to Brian Douglas for three years by the summer of 1963, and he’d been asking me when we were going to get married. I met him when I went off to Princeton University pursuing a degree in Russian literature when I met Brian, and we hit it off real well. He courted me for two years, and in 1960, finally proposed, and I said yes. But that was before...</p><p>That was before I realised that I was a sinner.</p><p>How am I a sinner, might you ask? Well, let me start from the beginning. I had a lot of friends growing up, and as we got older, hit puberty and started becoming interested in boys, I found that I really... wasn’t... interested in the boys. I sure was good at acting like it, though, because I knew it would be noticed if the most feminine girl in the school wasn’t chasing after the boys. One of our friends, Stacey Barkley, was mocked for not being boy crazy, and then she started wearing trousers and the girls started making fun of her even more. I kept our friendship a secret, going over to her house late at night and hanging out with her outside of school. The day she told me she was tired of being my little secret, she told me that she liked me. As in, <em> like </em> liked me. I was shocked and I didn’t know how to react. A girl <em> like </em> liked <em> me? </em> I didn’t know what to say to her. Mama always said that boys who like boys and girls who like girls were sinners, so I told Stacey that she was being a sinner. She only laughed and said I didn’t have to talk to her again if I didn’t want to, and for about three years, I didn’t.</p><p>I regretted that decision so much. I found that I missed Stacey so much and I missed our friendship, and I realised that Stacey made me feel things that no one else ever did. No boy had ever made my heart skip like Stacey did, and no boy ever made me feel as beautiful or important as she did, either. When I came back from college engaged to Brian, she called me and asked if I would meet her in the park at night, which I did. “I don’t want you to get married,” she told me.</p><p>“I have to. It’s what I’m expected to do,” I told her.</p><p>“Do you even love him?” she asked me.</p><p>“Yes. No? I don’t know, Stacey... He’s kind to me, he’s smart... He’s going to be a lawyer when he graduates, like Daddy,” I’d told her.</p><p>“Do you... Do you love me?” she asked, taking me aback.</p><p>“Stacey... I... I don’t know...” I answered honestly. “I enjoy the time we spend together, but... but we can’t be together. It...” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “It’s illegal... not to mention it’s also a sin.”</p><p>“Who told you it was a sin?” she asked me.</p><p>“Mama did.”</p><p>“And who told her?”</p><p>“I don’t know. A priest, I guess, or her parents.”</p><p>“Someone who <em> decided </em> it was going to be a sin. You know, the Bible says nothing about homosexuality.”</p><p>“Shh! What if someone hears you?” I hissed.</p><p>“I don’t care if they did. My point is, God wants everyone to love everyone no matter what. Not allowing people to love someone because they love someone of the same sex is what’s a sin.” I was silent, unsure of how to answer her. I agreed with her completely, but I couldn’t help but fear everything I was taught. “I love you, Delaney.” Now that shocked me even more. “I want to be with you... like men can be with women. Like Brian is with you. I don’t want to hide who I am anymore... My cousin was out visiting Los Angeles recently and she said there’s communities there for people like us.”</p><p>“People like us?” I said, now somewhat offended. “Stacey, we are <em> nothing </em>. At least, not yet.”</p><p>“Will we ever be?”</p><p>“I don’t know! Stacey, this is too much! My parents would be so ashamed and angry, and Brian would be so disgusted...” She let out a sigh, then took my hand in hers and squeezed it firmly.</p><p>“I know this is hard... You haven’t figured it out yet. I knew it very quickly, but I suppose for you, it’s a little harder. I’ll wait for you, if that’s what it takes... but I can’t go years without seeing you again, Delaney. Can we please at least see each other?”</p><p>“I suppose... but Stacey, I don’t know if this is who I am. What if I’m just going through some weird phase?”</p><p>“If that’s what you think... but I don’t think you are. Think about it and please don’t push me away again,” she asked me. I questioned my feelings for her for the next year and still wasn’t entirely sure if Stacey was who I truly loved and who I truly wanted, but the first time Brian tried to have sex with me, almost two years after we became engaged... that was when I knew. I told him I’d changed my mind and he got angry at me, and I left crying and ran all the way to Stacey’s house. “You have to leave him,” Stacey told me. “You can’t be with someone who you don’t love.”</p><p>“What would my parents say? They’d be so angry with me and so ashamed!” I cried. “I can’t do it... This is just what I have to do.”</p><p>“No you don’t. We can run away together to one of those communities,” Stacey told me.</p><p>“My parents would disown me and I’d have no one!” I cried through tears.</p><p>“But you’d have me... If your parents can’t love you for who you are, they don’t deserve you for a daughter. Delaney, you’re a wonderful person and just because you’re different doesn’t mean you aren’t worthy of being loved,” Stacey told me, taking my hands in hers.</p><p>“Does your mother love you for who you are?” I asked her.</p><p>“She pretends she doesn’t know. She’s lying to herself, thinking I’m going to find a husband and have a family. But I don’t want that. I don’t want a husband, I want you,” she replied, and then she placed a finger under my chin, bringing my eyes to meet hers. “Look at me...” She didn’t move for a moment, and then before I knew what she was doing, she leaned in to press her lips against mine. I’d kissed plenty of boys before, but kissing Stacey just felt... right. It was like our lips fit together perfectly like two pieces of a puzzle. When she pulled back, our eyes met, and I knew then that I was in love with her... but I still couldn’t turn my back on my family.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” I whispered to her. “I wish I was as strong as you...” With that said, I got up and I left, but that didn’t stop Stacey. She continued to try and convince me to run away with her for the next year, until finally, I said that I would consider it. And that leads us here to my vanity tonight. In order to run away with Stacey, I had to tell my family and Brian that I was running off with my girlfriend. I just couldn’t willingly disappear without a word, so I was practicing in front of my vanity.</p><p>“I can’t do this,” I told my reflection. “I can’t, I can’t do this...” I was just too scared. I loved my family too much to lose them. I’d have to tell Stacey, I’m sure she’d understand. Well, she’d roll her eyes and just try again. I suppose Stacey really did love me enough to never give up on me, but she wouldn’t succeed. Maybe we could have an affair on the side, but it was the right thing to do to marry men and try to live as normal of a life as possible.</p><p>Why was I such a coward?</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Will Delaney really let herself marry someone she doesn’t love just because she thinks it’s the right thing to do, or will she change her mind?</p><p>Please review!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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